The Consequences of Believing Nonsense

As we wind into the weekend, the blog thought you needed a little somethin'-somethin' to worry about over the grill. One of the things that many climate scientists believe, but will not say out loud, is that the planet we live on may already be cooked well beyond our ability to uncook it it. And, yes, you may consider "cook" a euphemism for a word the Supreme Court declared on Thursday that Cher now accidentally could say on television. Quoth the Guardian:

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According to the new EIA data, carbon dioxide emissions from the US have resumed their rise, after a brief blip caused by the financial crisis and recession in 2008. That increase came despite the much-vaunted switch from coal to shale gas — with its lower emissions than coal when burned for energy — that has dominated the US's energy economy in recent years. China, which in 2006 took over the US's historical position as the world's biggest emitter, raced ahead in 2010, emitting 8.3bn tonnes — up 15.5% on the previous year, and a 240% increase since 1992. That makes China alone responsible for about one-quarter of global carbon emissions from energy, emitting about 48% more than the US.

In other words, we're all going backwards, and not forwards, on the most critical environmental issue in the history of the planet. The Chinese are going backwards because they're hopelessly overindustrialized and because they're short-sighted. We're going backwards just because we're stupid and an entire half of our acceptable political dialogue — most certainly including one of our two political parties — is palpably insane.

The other night, the kindly Doctor Maddow ran a remarkable segment in which she demonstrated how one crackpot's theory about the whole Fast And Furious mishigas — namely, that it was a clever Obama plot to increase gun violence so as to activate the administration's secret plan to introduce radical gun-control legislation down the line — has led to the current standoff between Congressman Darrell Issa and Attorney General Eric Holder, and through him, with the president himself. In other words, thanks to utter conservative insanity, and to a supine press unwilling or unable to recognize the crazy person screaming in the subway car, a tiny constitutional crisis was born and a genuine policy problem will be left unresolved.

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The climate crisis is this phenomenon writ large. There is an entire intellectual industry — largely financed by entire extraction industries — dedicated to climate-change denial. There are national politicians — hi there, Jim Inhofe! — whose careers depend on believing really crazy stuff about why the Arctic is going away. (The Economist ran a judicious account of the disappearing ice-caps this week, judiciously remembering to mention the economic advantages of our new "access to precious minerals" and the sudden existence of an actual Northwest Passage: "In the long run the unfrozen north could cause devastation.But, paradoxically, in the meantime no Arctic species will profit from it as much as the one causing it: humans. Disappearing sea ice may spell the end of the last Eskimo cultures, but hardly anyone lives in an igloo these days anyway. And the great melt is going to make a lot of people rich." I'm reassured.) There are more than a few people in positions of power who believe that the whole climate-change event is a scenario dreamed up by a) scientists who want to get rich, and b) United Nations bureaucrats who want to herd us into apartment blocks and control our local zoning boards. That's where our old friend, Agenda 21, comes into thing, playing the role assayed by the gun-crazy from Alabama in the Fast And Furious story.

Agenda 21, and its attendant conspiracy theories, was a product of the original Rio conference. Now what do you suppose is going to be the general reaction to the data produced by Rio+20 if it says what the Guardian indicates it might say — namely, that we all might be pretty well, ah, cooked? You know very well what it's going to be. Half of the legitimate political dialogue is going to start with the lavishly financed skree-skree-skreeing. Several actual elected congrescritters are going to start raving about UN plots and Alger Hiss. (No kidding. If you dive deep enough into the fever swamp of anti-Agenda 21 lunacy, he's in there.) One of our major cable news networks is going to dedicate itself to complete misinformation, and the rest of the "legitimate" news media are going to treat the propaganda channel as though it were a serious news operation, and not Romper Room for angry shut-ins. The AM radio dial is going to be a constant drumbeat of nonsense. And, because sensible people will be unwilling or unable to counter all this, nothing actually will get done.

If you consider the truth to be as malleable as we do in our current political climate, then you wind up with grim consequences. There are serious dangers to a self-governing republic if enough people are willing to believe, and to act, on nonsense. (Someone should write a book.) But, of course, what do we care? We're not Eskimos.

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